Status of knowledge regarding school health services among school teachers: a cross sectional study from a northern Indian state

Abstract

Background: School-age children spend one-third of their time in schools. Teachers are key personnel to look after the health of school children. Teachers can provide health education to school children, assess the school environment for better health outcomes, provide health care services and help in the maintenance of school health records. Aim of the study was to assess the status of knowledge of school health services (SHS) among school teachers.Methods: Government and private schools in a Northern Indian state. A community-based cross-sectional study. It includes 50 randomly selected designated schoolteachers for SHS by the PPS methods from the schools which were functional since at least five years in the study area. A pre-tested self-administered questionnaire was used to assess the knowledge regarding SHS. Percentage, proportion and χ2 test were used as statistical methods. The p-value 0.05 was considered statistically significant.Results: 38% participants were of 41-50 years of age group, 54% were females and 48% had an experience of ≤10 years. 22% participants had training regarding SHS. 40% participants had moderately adequate knowledge (p-value=0.04). It was observed to be more among participants of rural, government, age group of 31-40 years, with experience of 21-30years, female and among trained teachers for school health.Conclusions: School teachers were lacking in knowledge regarding environment and sanitation; communicable and non-communicable diseases; and health education for school children. We also observed that training regarding SHS was a majorly missing component which could be the reason behind poor level knowledge among schoolteachers.

Involvement of high school teachers in Health Promoting School program in selected township, Yangon Region, Myanmar: A cross-sectional mixed methods study

“…Another study showed that the majority of the teachers were aged 40–59 years [ 39 ]. In this study, the teachers with lower than 10 years of service duration were more than other categories and it matched the findings of earlier studies [ 26 , 38 , 47 , 48 ]. However, it was contrary to that of Saudi Arabia study stated that the majority were 6 years and more services duration as teaching professionals [ 24 ].…”

“…Regarding the school location, urban school teachers were more than the rural school teachers in the recent study. It differed from some published studies, reported that rural school teachers were more than urban school teachers [ 26 , 47 , 49 ]. The possible explanations for these variations were due to the differences in the demographic nature of the study area and sample size of the study population.…”

“…In the current study, the findings indicate that 19.6% of high school teachers were those with a high level of knowledge regarding HPS program. It was lower than the findings of previous studies done in Myanmar with 62.9% of a high level of knowledge [ 26 ], Nigeria with 49.8% and 55.9% of good knowledge [ 51 , 52 ], India with 40% of moderately adequate knowledge [ 47 ] and 22% of moderately adequate knowledge [ 48 ]. Conversely, it was higher than the findings of the other studies done in Nigeria with 8% of a good level of knowledge [ 43 ], 15.4% with adequate knowledge [ 53 ], and 16.3% with a good level of knowledge [ 41 ].…”

Is India ready for fundamental right to health?

“…To assess the status of knowledge regarding school health services among schoolteachers, a cross sectional study conducted in a northern Indian state revealed that they were lacking the rudimentary knowledge regarding environment and sanitation; communicable and noncommunicable diseases; and health education for school children. 13 And thus comes the lack of accessibility to information which despite government's efforts, needs further strengthening.…”

Pendidikan Kesehatan terhadap Personal Higiene Santri

“…Penerapan personal higiene antara laki-laki dan perempuan berbeda, anak perempuan lebih besar kemungkinan menerapkan personal higiene seperti mencuci tangan, mandi, membersihkan gigi, membersihkan kuku dan menjaga kebersihan baju dibandingkan anak laki-laki. Keikutsertaan guru dalam pelatihan tentang sekolah sehat juga berhubungan dengan penerapan personal higiene, guru yang pernah mendapatkan pelatihan tentang sekolah sehat berpeluang 7,559 kali untuk menerapkan personal higiene yang baik bila dibandingkan dengan guru yang tidak mengikuti pelatihan tentang sekolah sehat (Ranga & Majra, 2020).…”